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Mac's drifting somewhere on the edge of sleep when the sound of his front door closing startles him back to fully awake. He's scrambling for the cell phone on his nightstand to alert the Phoenix—never mind that Desi’s absolutely going to say “I told you so” about his home security—when the faint sound of a chip bag crumpling clues him in to who's broken into his house. He rolls his eyes and relaxes. On the plus side, no stranger would be breaking in at one in the morning to steal his chips. The downside? He's definitely going to hear about his locks sooner rather than later.
With a sigh, he rolls out of bed and blindly grabs for the sweatpants on the floor. Thus clothed, he makes no attempt at stealth on his way to the kitchen. He finds Desi at his kitchen table, still in the same dress she was wearing earlier, eating chips in the dark. His chips.
“We have got to stop meeting like this,” he says, flipping the light on, only to freeze at the dark stain on the front of her dress. “Please tell me that's not blood.”
Desi gives him an appraising look and eats another chip. Mac vaguely thinks he probably should’ve put a shirt on for this. “It's wine,” she reassures him. “My date didn't go quite that badly.”
Mac tilts his head. “I take it it didn't go well,” he says, and hopefully he sounds an appropriate degree of sympathetic.
“That it didn't,” she says and hums thoughtfully. “He was boring. Wasn't a fan of the shark story. Called me crazy.” She shrugs, the movement loose and fluid enough to suggest she's not entirely sober.
Mac raises his eyebrows. “I called you crazy for that.”
“Mmm. That's different.”
“How?”
“You called me crazy like you were mad you hadn't thought to do it first,” she says, gesturing to him with a chip, and, okay, fair point.
“So, what, you broke into my house to steal my chips because your date was boring and spilled his drink on you?” He fixes her with a critical look, because he's clearly missing something here.
“Of course not,” she says, face suddenly serious. “I need your help with, uh…” she trails off and gestures at the stain on her dress. Somehow she's no less stunning with wine down her front.
Mac frowns. “You could've just looked up how to get red wine out of fabric,” he says. “It's not hard, all you need is table salt and boiling water—“
“Oh, it's not getting it out that's the problem,” Desi interrupts. “And it's not his drink, it's mine. He put something in it and I need to know what,” she says, grinning sharply, “so I can decide how many of his bones to break.”
Mac’s eyebrows shoot up. “You could've led with that,” he says, because that makes a whole lot more sense. He smiles crookedly. “Knowing you, I'm surprised he still has bones left to break.”
She shrugs carelessly. “I'd rather not get banned from my favorite restaurant again for making a scene.”
“Again?” he prompts, although he's honestly not surprised.
Desi rolls her eyes and doesn't explain. “So can you help me or not?”
“Of course I can.” Science challenge and righteous vengeance? Sign him up.
“Great,” she says as she folds the chip bag closed and stands. “Um…” she glances down at the stain again and frowns like she's not sure what to do with it. It's kind of adorable. She'd probably punch him if he said that out loud.
(He probably wouldn't mind.)
“I should have something you can change into so I can pull a sample out of your dress,” he says and staunchly does not question the wisdom of lending Desi his clothes, because priority one here is being a decent goddamn friend, and he can take Desi's advice and put everything else in a box for now. (And then never open it, and it'll disappear eventually. Probably.)
She smiles gratefully. “Actually, would you mind if I used your shower? I'm—" she gestures to the stain on her dress and winces “—kind of sticky.”
“Not at all,” he says. “I'll—" he gestures vaguely behind him. “I'll find you something to put on when you're done.” He turns and walks away before he can say something stupid.
He finds a t-shirt and sweatpants for Desi to borrow, and they're going to be too big for her, but there's nothing he can do about that, so he returns and finds Desi staring into space, still standing exactly where she'd been when he walked away. He frowns. “You okay?”
She shakes herself the tiniest bit and nods. “I'm fine,” she says.
He's not quite convinced, but she's not going to talk about it if she doesn't want to, so he just holds the clothes out to her. “Uh, here.”
She smiles as she takes them. “Thanks,” she says before slipping past him and out of the kitchen.
“If you put your dress outside the door, I can pull a sample from it while you're in the shower,” he calls after her.
He gets a vague affirmative noise in response. The bathroom door closes, then opens again a moment later. “Hey, Mac?” Desi calls. “Can you do me another favor?”
“What is it?” he asks as Desi reemerges from the bathroom, one arm contorted behind her and face scrunched up in frustration.
“Unzip me?” She turns around and drops her arm, and Mac sees the zipper she was struggling to reach. “I swear, they make these things as difficult to get in and out of as possible.”
“I wouldn't know,” Mac says, and even with her back turned, he can see in the tilt of her head that she's rolling her eyes at him. “The only dress I've ever worn didn't have a zipper.” He undoes the zipper on her dress and very pointedly does not look at the way the fabric shifts against her skin, because that's another one for the “things he'd probably get punched for” list.
(It's getting to be a concerningly long list.)
She glances over her shoulder at him, eyebrows raised. “Now that's a story I’d like to hear.”
He grins, although it's probably not as interesting a story as she's imagining. “In my defense,” he says, “I looked really good in it.”
She laughs as she ducks back into the bathroom. A moment later, the door opens a crack and she drops the dress outside. He collects it and inspects the stain; it's mostly dried, but that shouldn't be a problem.
By the time he hears the water shut off, he's got an answer for Desi that comes in pretty high on the “how many bones to break” metric. He's considering what's left of the stain, debating whether it'll still come out completely after how long it had to set, when soft footsteps behind him alert him to Desi’s return. “I've got what I needed from this,” he says, gesturing to the dress in front of him. “Do you want me to—“ he turns to face her and the words evaporate somewhere between his brain and his mouth, because absolutely nothing could have prepared him for the picture Desi makes, standing in the doorway in his t-shirt, sweatpants rolled up at the cuffs to keep them from dragging, damp hair falling loosely around her face. She looks unaccountably soft in a way that makes his chest ache in spite of the knowledge that she's anything but.
She just tilts her head and fixes him with an expectant look, and it takes him a moment to remember that he'd started asking a question.
“The stain, do you want me to take it out,” he says, gesturing vaguely.
She smiles, running a hand through her hair, and Mac tracks the way the movement makes the too-big shirt shift minutely on her lean frame. “I'd appreciate that.” She crosses the room to settle in the chair across from him, swinging her feet up onto the edge of the table, and gestures to the row of glasses of pinkish liquid between them. “What's the verdict?”
He clears his throat. “Well, the good news is, you didn't drink that,” he says, gesturing to the row of glasses before turning to grab salt. “Bad news, you definitely should've just skipped straight to breaking bones.” He sprinkles the salt over the stain and nods to the glasses. “Most likely gamma-hydroxybutyrate. Potential effects include nausea, dizziness, anterograde amnesia, confusion, and unconsciousness. Higher doses can be deadly, especially mixed with alcohol.” He nods at the wine stain, mouth twisting grimly.
She wears a grin like a razor blade, icy sharp, and just like that, any illusion of softness freezes and shatters around her faster than he could say “endothermic”. “Make him regret having bones to break, roger that,” she says.
Mac smiles grimly and points to the odd one out in his row of glasses, a mason jar with lid screwed on. “That one’s uncontaminated, in case you wanted to go to the police with it,” he says. “I gotta admit, though, I think I like your plan better.” Whoever this guy is, he deserves all his bones broken and then some.
Desi yawns and stretches as he brushes the salt off her dress into the sink and turns the water on. “I'll let you know how it goes.”
“A word of advice, hydrogen peroxide takes bloodstains out of clothing,” he says, watching the stain he's currently dealing with steadily disappear down the drain.
“I'll keep that in mind,” she says. She picks up one of the glasses of liquid and swirls it idly, holding it up to the light. “I should probably get going.”
“You can stay,” he says, too quickly. “If you want. You don't have to. Obviously,” he adds.
Desi just gives him a look like he's being stupid, which he is, before taking a deep breath and letting it out. “I really wasn't looking forward to walking back to my apartment in heels,” she admits.
Mac doesn't bother asking the obvious question of where she's left her car, because it doesn't matter, it's late, and wherever it is, he can give her a ride in the morning. If she's actually going to stay. “I can take the couch,” he says.
“Don't be stupid,” Desi says, rolling her eyes as she swings her feet down. “Your couch sucks almost as much as your security system.”
He sighs. He should've known he wasn't going to get by without hearing about his locks again. “I'm not going to make you take the couch. You can have the bed,” he says, because she's not wrong. It's not exactly a great couch for sleeping on.
“There's plenty of room for two people in the bed,” she says, like it's perfectly obvious, which it is, but until a second ago, it was also pretty confidently on the list of things he'd get punched for saying out loud. She grins. “I don't bite. Probably.” Her eyes glitter with mischief, and God, Mac is so, so fucked, he's absolutely not going to survive if she keeps looking at him like that, like there's a terrific secret that just the two of them are in on, standing there in his kitchen, in his clothes, a one-hit KO of a woman.
He turns his gaze back to the sink, because he doesn't trust himself to form words and look at her at the same time, and watches the last of the stain fade into nothing. “You make a compelling case.”
“Two conditions.” She's much closer than she had been when he turns around, skirting the edge of his personal space. “One, put a shirt on. I know you own more than one,” she says, tugging on the hem of the one she’s wearing as she looks him up and down and gives him an unimpressed smirk.
It’s eerily reminiscent of their first meeting, he reflects as he tilts his head and gives her an expectant look, waiting for whatever her other condition is. Like there’s anything that could come out of her mouth that he’d say no to when she’s standing there wearing his clothes and smelling like his shampoo. “Two?” he manages after a long moment.
Her grin widens. “I’m a big spoon,” she says. “No compromises.” She turns and walks away without waiting for a response, which is just as well, because Mac doesn’t have one. His brain has officially short-circuited. This is an absolutely, colossally bad idea. He should just take the couch. Trying to sleep with Desi wrapped around him like a security blanket? Might actually kill him.
“We have got to stop meeting like this,” he repeats to the empty kitchen as he turns to follow her.